Forbeck.com

Good Days, Bad Days

May 23, 2005

Sometimes there are days you can’t ever seem to get going. Other times, you can do no wrong.

Today, for example, I got to sleep about 1 AM. Then two of the quads woke me up screaming (them, not me—although I was tempted) at 5:30 AM. I’m used to that kind of thing by now though. I’ll spare you the details of multiple toddlers ripping off their soiled diapers during their naps on other, worse days. I’d rather remember the less horrifying times.

For instance, the I left LA last month, I had a great meeting with a new game design client. We all really hit it off, and we came up with a great product we all have high hopes for. Everyone seemed to enjoy my work, and I walked out of there with a wonderful deal.

It used to be that when I went into negotiations over prices, rights, etc., I’d have butterflies in my stomach, but that day, I was just rock solid. I knew what I wanted, and I could explain exactly why I should get it. It was more than good. It was fun.

I left that meeting at 5 PM and headed straight into LA’s rush-hour traffic with just an hour to meet my friends from Conan Properties for dinner at LAX. Amazingly, it was smooth sailing, and even though I had to gas up a rental car, return it, hop a shuttle to the airport, and hoof it to the restaurant, I got there just after they did. We had a wonderful dinner at The Encounter, and I got to see an old friend and make some new ones. Better yet, I was asked if I’d be interested in consulting on a film script for a non-Conan property.

After dinner, I wandered into the airport hours before my 11:15 PM red-eye back to O’Hare. I discovered that the 6 PM flight—the last before the all-nighter—had been delayed. Apparently they’d had a mechanical problem and had to turn around in the air and come back to have it fix. Ignoring nagging questions about the safety of such a jet, I got a standby seat on that flight—a window seat—which got me home two and a half hours earlier.

To top it all off, the airline gave everyone on the flight a free voucher for another flight to make up for the delay.